Love Story
by paperstorm
Summary: After all, you can’t choose who you love," a good friend said to me once. We wouldn’t if we could.


**Hello beautiful readers. A whi**l**e ago, I stumbled across some Fred/George stories that were so unbelievably beautiful that I was inspired to write this :) I know that the idea of twincest is unorthodox, but I instead ask you to try coming at it with an open mind and with the mentality that love is beautiful no matter who it's between.**

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_The world will be remembered best through the eyes of a storyteller._

I read that somewhere once, or heard someone say it maybe. I'd never been a big fan of sayings, but for some unknown reason that phrase always stuck with me. It's absolutely true – it sometimes doesn't matter how something actually happened, but it does matter how it is remembered. This is a story just like any other, with moments of happiness and moments of sorrow; with trials and tribulations; with optimism and hopelessness. It is my story. _Our_ story. And most of all, like so many stories, this is a story of love.

They tried to split us up a hundred times. We didn't realize it for what it really was, then. We thought they just wanted us to branch out a bit. To meet new people. To find an interest in something other then ourselves and each other; so we'd know what to do with ourselves if we were ever apart, I guess. We slept in the same crib when we were babies. Probably just easier for mum to lump us together at the beginning. She already had three other little kids after all – what with the curious and rebellious Bill, headstrong and fearless Charlie, and bossy and demanding Percy, she had quite enough to be getting on with. And then came Ron, who would do anything his big brothers told him to (however dangerous or illegal), and then Ginny, who was premature, and often sick as a child. I expect we were quite a handful. And for a while everyone thought it was cute that we didn't want to sleep apart. They got us separate beds when we were near four, though, their excuse being that we were too big for the crib. But we know better now. We were seven when Mum got tired of yelling at one of us thinking it was the other, and the tradition of putting an F and a G on the Weasley Christmas jumpers started. But we never paid attention when we got dressed in the morning, so we always ended up wearing each other's anyway. Besides, Mum couldn't put a G and an F on everything we owned.

When we were nine they tried to send him to our Great Auntie Muriel's for three weeks in the summer. Through listening at several doors we found out our school teacher had sent home a report saying she was concerned that we'd never made any friends other than each other. She was worried about our obvious lack in social development, and suggested we spend some time apart in order to get to know ourselves. They told us something about Great Auntie Muriel needing some yard work done and only needing one of us to do it. It was a lie. They were afraid. Afraid of what we might become. We made a huge fuss about it, one of our best as I recall, and in the end they agreed to let us both go. Then when we were eleven, a few days before Hogwarts, Dad walked into our room and found that even though we'd pretended to be excited when they'd got us our own beds, one of us would still crawl into the other's before either of us could sleep. We'd usually been good about going back before morning so Mum and Dad wouldn't find out. But I guess that morning we forgot. I remember how mad they were, although we didn't understand why, then. One of the last things Mum said to us before we left for our first year was 'Why can't you just be normal?' I never forgot that. They told us it was time for us to stop dressing alike, stop being each other's best friend and start acting like two separate people. But they don't understand. We aren't two separate people.

I believe some twins were meant to be two people; the ones who aren't _completely_ identical, the ones that hate it when people confuse them and adopt totally different personalities to establish themselves as two distinctive people, apart from each other. But not us. I believe we were never meant to be two people. I believe something went wrong somewhere along the way. Maybe Mum was sick or fell down the stairs or something, and subsequently the cells broke apart in a way they were never supposed to. In our eyes, separating us further was just cruel. We aren't complete without each other. Once in second year he was ill for a week, and it was the longest week of my life. I didn't know what to do with myself. I floated through the hours, merely carrying out the actions of living without any conscious acknowledgement of anything that was going on. I couldn't exist without him. I even snuck into the hospital wing one night so I could curl up in bed with him. I'd rarely slept alone and the bed felt huge and cold and unfamiliar without his body next to mine. I can still see Madam Pomfrey's face when she found us the next morning. She told us what we were doing was wrong. She wasn't the first.

"Why?" we asked her.

"Because it is," she said.

That's all we ever heard. That's all the evidence ever given to us as to why it was wrong for us to be so close. Because it is. We realized for ourselves later of course. Through a combination of books and casually asking around we found out about horrible words like 'gay' and 'sodomy' and worst of all, 'incest', and realized what people had been talking about. We were disgusted that people thought of us in that way – there was nothing sexual about what we did! Not then, anyway. We were innocent children who simply needed to always be together. And according to what we'd read there was nothing wrong with two twelve year old boys sharing a bed. But still, it was different after that. We still couldn't sleep without being together, but somehow it wasn't the same. It was a secret now; it was bad, and we knew it. I think what got to us the most was that we still didn't know _why_ it was wrong. Oh we _knew_ it was wrong of course, we could at least feel something inside us telling us it was wrong. But we ached to know _why_. We longed for someone to lay it out for us, plain and simple. No one did. Maybe no one could. And maybe that's where it all started.

I remember the first time we kissed. We were fourteen. It was a few days before we left Hogwarts for Christmas break, and it was the first time I saw him masturbating. We weren't sleeping in the same bed that night, I don't quite remember why. We were probably so tired from the term that we'd fallen asleep before one of us could sneak over to the other's bed or something. I'd gotten up in the middle of the night to use the washroom, and when I got back I heard muffled noises coming from behind his bed curtains. I pulled back the curtains thinking he was having a bad dream. He wasn't. And I'll never forget that sight. A thin but Quidditch-toned body with creamy skin covered in a light spattering of freckles. A head thrown back on the pillow, surrounded by a halo of silky burnt-orange hair, turned to gold in the moonlight. A strong arm pumping up and down, leading down to a thin-fingered hand wrapped around himself. Over the years I've almost managed to convince myself I was hearing things, or that it was simply wishful thinking, but in that moment I was almost sure I heard him whisper my name with a particularly vigorous stroke. Needless to say it did wonders to my nether regions. I'm not sure how long I stood there in awe before he noticed me – seconds or hours – but in any case it was eons too long. I yanked the curtains closed and dove back into my own bed; my heart pounding so loud I was sure he could hear it. My insides boiled as I realized exactly what I'd just witnessed, and worse; the resulting feelings below my waist. Everything about the situation was wrong. It was wrong for me to have seen him, it was wrong for me to have liked what I saw, and it was wrong for me to have sat there almost wishing I hadn't closed the curtains. I barely heard him grunt his orgasm – the blood pounding in my ears deafening me. We sat in silence for a few minutes then, both all too aware of what had just happened and that we were both sitting there in the darkness with no idea what to do or say.

He slithered soundlessly into bed beside me after what felt like forever. We studied each other's faces for a few moments, each trying to read the world of emotions playing across them. I saw embarrassment and apprehension and anxiety, and he must've seen what can only be described as terror. Pure terror at what I'd seen, how I'd felt, and of not knowing what was going to happen next. And then, he kissed me. Just like that. No preamble, no hype. No explanation. Just raw emotion. I feared I may have lost rational thought forever in that moment. My stomach dropped about a foot and then twisted its way slowly back up, only to plummet again as his tongue brushed over my lips. Fingers gripping hair, chests rubbing frantically, hands roaming under shirts and mouths crashing hungrily into lips in an ecstasy of everything I'd ever wanted, but had always been afraid to find. We fell asleep tangled in each other's arms that night.

But the next day the fairy tale broke. Everything snapped right back to normal; it was as if the night before had been nothing but a beautiful dream that melted away with the sunrise. Our dorm mates never said a word, but I think they knew, and so did he. The thought terrified us, and we never spoke of it again.

I remember the first time he told me he had a crush on a girl. Sixth year. We'd never shown too much interest in girls as a sexual entity up to that point. I'd never felt that way about a girl in my life, and neither had he, as far as I knew. But now, he fancied one. And not just any old one. _Hermione Granger,_ of all people. Hermione; our little brother's know-it-all friend Hermione! The one we both knew Ron was secretly in love with, even if he refused to admit it. The one we'd gone to the Quidditch World Cup with earlier that year, the one we'd spent Christmas with. He casually slipped it into a conversation of a completely different topic, as if it were no big deal. He was wrong. It tore me apart, slashed my insides and ripped my heart into a million shreds of despair.

"She's pretty," he shrugged, as if that made everything better.

"And the fact that you know very well how Ron feels about her?" I pointed out.

"Nice smile, too," he commented, my words passing right through him as he gazed at her across the common room.

A big rusty knife, right through my very soul; that's what my other half had just done to me. He was right, too, that's what made it so hard to hear – she _was_ pretty. I could see myself fancying her as well, in another lifetime. But I hated Hermione in that moment. We'd always got on well before – in the four years I'd known her I'd come to regard her as almost as much of a sister as Ginny – but just then I hated her like I'd never hated anyone before. How dare she take him away from me? He was the one person I cared about most in the world. We were meant to be together, which I think I knew by that point even if a part of me still felt it was wrong. How could she be so unkind? I wanted to scream at her, to hit her even. I refused to talk to her for weeks after that, and made a deliberate point of throwing her the dirtiest looks I could muster whenever our paths crossed. She never mentioned it, but threw me hurt and confused looks back, poor thing. I've always felt bad about that, especially since she would soon prove to be one of the best friends I'd ever had. But of course, I didn't know that then.

I can't always recall the first time we had sex. Something deep inside me still tells me it was a mistake, even after all these years and all that's happened, so maybe I'm forgetting on purpose. It comes and it goes – sometimes I can picture it as clear as if it were yesterday and sometimes it's as if it never happened, as if the memories are trying to escape my subconscious in some bizarre attempt to take back what we did.

It was one of those things that just _happened,_ with no discussion and probably no good reason. I _think_ we were drunk. Not so drunk that we couldn't remember things the next day, just tipsy enough that everything becomes funny and bad ideas look like good ones. I know we were seventeen. He was beautiful, I remember that perfectly. The same thin but Quidditch-toned body I'd been secretly picturing for years, but taller and not quite as skinny. His eyes a beautiful shade of amber, and filled with hunger and lust. And I'd never wanted anything so much. His mouth, his hands, his body, I wanted it all. More than a few times I had lied awake and listened to the sounds of him pleasuring himself and I knew he made a noise halfway between a sigh and a moan when he came, and I wanted to be the one to elicit those delicious noises from him.

He kissed me intensely and I didn't know why kissing him was different from anyone else. It was just a kiss. But somehow, with him, it was more. His hands ran teasingly down my body, sending shivers down my spine. I'm sure I made exceptionally embarrassing noises when he finally reached my erection and stroked slowly … once … twice … I swear I could've come right there. I remember how hot he was when I took him into my mouth. I remember thinking I could've gotten off on the noises he was making alone. And, best of all, he was moaning, panting, thrashing around on the bed, for _me_. All because of me. I'm sure I had much less self-restraint than he did when he took me into his mouth. I remember he pulled away just as I was about to come, and the feeling of being denied the release I so badly needed was horrible and wonderful all at the same time. He swooped down on me and entered me suddenly, with a kind of animal ferocity I had never seen in him before. How many times had I fantasized about it? How many times had I brought myself to orgasm wishing it were him instead? And now it was. The real thing, the kind that shatters you into a million pieces, sends you catapulting into the air and then slams you on the floor.

But I didn't understand any of it. I didn't understand why the sight of his face, his eyes, his lips was suddenly enough to make me harder than I'd ever been before, when I'd been looking at that same face and those same eyes and lips every day for my entire life with no such effect. Especially when all I'd have to do was look in a mirror and the exact same image would appear before me. I didn't understand how someone could be attracted to his identical twin brother without being attracted to himself too. I didn't understand how his hand on my erection could feel a hundred times better than my own, when really it was the same hand anyway. It made no sense, and at the same time, all the sense in the world. At the same time I found myself wondering how I could have ever lived without the feeling of his hand on that intimate place or his mouth on my neck. How I could have sat and stood and _slept_ next to him for all those years and not realized mere inches and fabric were all that separated us from being inside each other; from truly completing each other in a way neither of us knew we could.

I'd had sex before, once with a boy and once with a girl; Lee Jordan, I think, and I honestly don't even remember who the girl was. This was different, though. It was more than sex. I've always hated the expression 'making love', but that's what it was. We were making, crafting, _creating_ love. We were taking ordinary passion and arousal and lust and turning it into love.

For all I can barely remember, I do remember that nothing was the same after that. We didn't speak for days; not with a conscious decision not to, but because for the first time in our lives neither of us knew what to say. To this day I don't know if that was because we knew what we'd done was wrong, or because deep down we knew it wasn't, and that scared us more.

I remember when we did speak again. He joined me in my bed for the first time in a week; crawled up beside me like an ashamed puppy hoping to be forgiven, and holding him in my arms again felt more like home then I can describe.

"I'm sorry," he whispered after a moment, his voice and shoulders shaking.

We'd never been afraid to cry in front of each other before, never, but I could tell he was holding back, and I wished I knew why. In fact, I remember wishing he _would_ cry, silently willing him to be sad, because sad I could fix. I knew exactly what to do when he was sad. Shame and remorse, however, were new to me. It was a widely known fact that the Weasley twins dove into everything head first; never looking back, never regretting. And yet, there he sat; looking back and regretting. I felt hopelessly inadequate in that moment; knowing I needed to fix things but not knowing how. I wanted to tell him everything would be the same, that it was just a mistake and it didn't matter, but even in my head the words tasted a lie.

"I'm sorry, too." I wasn't, but I didn't know what else to say. I loved him. I think it was right then that I knew it for sure.

I remember the first people I ever told were Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. I didn't know at the time why I chose them. My little brother's best friends – it didn't make any sense then. But it makes perfect sense now. Through Christmases and summers at our house Harry had become much more a part of my family then not. He was as good as a brother, if not better. And Hermione had (and still does have) a beautiful ability to talk anyone through anything. She just smiles that pretty smile of hers, takes your hand and says everything will be okay and somehow it is, even when in reality it isn't. I remember that conversation flawlessly, mostly because I never let myself forget it. I told them outright, deciding it was better to cut to the chase but dreading their reactions, expecting the same disgust and disapproval I knew I'd get from anyone else. I received neither. They were no doubt surprised, but Harry's arm around my shoulder and Hermione's hands tightly wrapped around mine let me know it didn't matter to them. They didn't hate me. They didn't think it was gross or wrong. They understood.

"After all, you can't choose who you love," Hermione said wisely. I remember that specifically – how wise she was, even at fifteen.

I told them everything after that, everything I could remember anyway. I must've talked for at least an hour, and they listened, and it was wonderful to say it out loud and not feel judged. I remember saying I was worried everyone would find out, because I knew the world wouldn't be as accepting as they were. Their faces hardened slightly at that. I guess they knew better then anyone how unforgiving the world could be, especially Harry, who had suffered much more at the hands of a sadistic society then I had.

"The world isn't always right," Harry said simply, a touch of darkness in his voice.

"Sometimes you have to go your own way and learn not to worry that the world might not follow you," Hermione added, squeezing my hand.

We moved in together after leaving the school before graduation; a cozy little flat over our joke shop in Diagon Alley. At first we were much too busy to dwell on anything other then business. Our store was packed from open until close, and the remainder of our spare time was spent inventing new products. We'd been dreaming of opening a joke shop together since we'd first heard of Zonko's, but once we did it was only bittersweet. It was nothing to do with the joke shop, I loved that, but because I knew how much better it would have been if things hadn't changed between us. We didn't sleep in the same bed anymore; we hadn't for months. We still talked and joked and laughed, but it was different somehow, in a way I could never pinpoint or define. He felt it too, I know he did. I loved him and was terrified he'd find out, so I couldn't open up to him completely like I'd been able to before, for fear of letting something slip and ruining us forever. Looking back I think maybe he loved me too, and I was even more terrified we'd live our entire lives and never tell each other how we really felt.

He started dating around months before I did, and it crushed me to watch him leave for a date, and even more so to hear him come home with her in his arms. I dated a few girls here and there, including Harry's ex-girlfriend Cho Chang, but it didn't work out. She was pretty, and smart, and fun and I had no good reason not to be crazy about her. But I wasn't. Harry'd broken up with her because he'd never been able to forgive her that it was her best friend who'd squealed about the D.A. to Umbridge, and I guess I couldn't either. That was my excuse anyway. Harry and Hermione knew better, but they were the only ones who did.

Most of all, I remember the day my world stopped turning. The day he proposed to Alicia Spinnet. I can still play it behind my eyes just as crystal clear and just as horrible as if it were happening all over again. He never told me he was going to ask her to marry him, that I remember vividly. I wished he had, because that would've meant he was still the brother I'd always had instead of this strange new person I didn't feel like I knew. It would've meant he still remembered how we used to be, even if just a little bit. I'd known they were getting kind of serious, but I had no idea he was days away from proposing when he'd casually mentioned he thought he was falling in love with her. I did my best to act excited, and he never said anything so he must've bought it. I remain convinced that were he not so oblivious to his surroundings from the excitement of being engaged he would've seen through my façade in a second, but being in love does strange things to people. Believe me, I know.

Our family was thrilled. They had still been assuming the worst where he and I were concerned, and probably thought that was a day that might never come. Mum in particular was ecstatic. I guess in her eyes the engagement effectively ended whatever chance there was of he and I becoming what they'd all feared we would. It did in my eyes too, actually, though it pained me to admit it, even to myself. Mum made the biggest and best feast of her life that night and invited every friend and relative she could get a hold of, the word 'relative' here meaning anyone who had even the tiniest speck of Weasley blood in their veins. Bill and Charlie apparated in from Egypt and Romania; Ron and Ginny were given permission to come home from Hogwarts for the evening, along with Harry and Hermione of course; Lupin, Mad-Eye Moody, Tonks and Kingsley Shaklebolt; Professor McGonagall, Hagrid and Professor Dumbledore himself. Not to mention countless Great Great Uncles, and step-Grandmothers-in-law, and third cousins twice removed; many of whom we'd never known we had. She even asked the Malfoys, for God's sake, but thankfully they didn't come – being of the opinion, I'm sure, that any occasion which would ultimately lead to a Weasley procreating was cause for anything _but_ celebration.

I hated the sight of them sitting at the head of the table, he unable to stop smiling and her practically glowing. And I hated myself too; this was supposed to be one of the best days of my brother's life and I couldn't even be happy for him. I tried, I really did. But I couldn't.

Later that night Alicia left to celebrate with her own family, and the five Weasley brothers and Harry took him out to a dance club or pub of some sort, I can't remember which. Under different circumstances that night might've been one of the best of my life too: all my favorite people in the whole world together, laughing and drinking. Not to mention Ron drinking entirely too much and with each drink becoming more sure of just how much every girl in the pub wanted him. As it was, I had to fight not to stare at my twin's overjoyed expression and wish it had been me who'd made him this happy, and every glance I did steal cut into me deeper and deeper until I was sure I'd never be whole again. The only person who did notice, and consequently the only person who seemed _not_ to be having the time of his life, was Harry. More then once I caught him watching me sympathetically when he thought I wasn't looking. And when he followed me outside when I left "to get some fresh air" and hugged me as if his heart were breaking for me, I cried in front of someone other then my twin brother for the first time since before I could remember.

The day before his wedding was the best day of my life. And probably the worst day of Alicia's life; I feel bad about that now. She was a sweet person and she didn't deserve what happened. And I truly believed she did love him, no matter how I tried to convince myself that she didn't. The whole family had come to Mum and Dad's for a lunch, and he'd stolen away to our old room to stare out the window, maybe at everything he'd finally realized he'd be losing if he went through with the wedding. I walked up quietly behind him, and he leaned his head on my shoulder; wrapping his arms around my waist like he hadn't done for months. I don't think I'd realized how much I'd missed him until just then.

"I don't think I can do this," he whispered, his voice rough and weak.

I can't even remember what I felt in that moment; it's all such a blur of shock and hope and happy and sad. He turned into me and breathed heavily into my neck, holding back tears.

"I can't," he repeated. "I don't love her. I love you."

And that was the end. And the beginning. The end of this story; the beginning of another. One where some people accept us and some don't, and we don't care either way. One where we take things one day at a time. It didn't end nearly as simply as I'm making it sound, but somehow, at the same time, it did. Love is a funny thing, it turns out. It has the all-consuming ability to change everything; twisting and turning until everything you ever knew is suddenly inside out and upside down. It teaches you to be patient and tolerant at times, and at other times to scream as loud as you can and fight to the death for what you believe in. In my life, I have learned to change what I can and accept what I cannot. We've accepted that we can't change who we are. "After all, you can't choose who you love," a good friend said to me once. We wouldn't if we could.

I love him more than I ever thought possible. Every day I think I love him as much as I ever could, and then the sun sets and rises again and I prove myself wrong. Days go by, weeks flow into years, and years turn into forever and somehow love keeps us breathing. A moment in his arms and everything makes sense again. A soft brush of his lips gives me the courage to fight what sometimes seems like a losing battle. One look into his eyes and I find the strength to run another mile. We know things will never be perfect. But, even though it's taken us more than twenty years to realize it, we know now that things will never work out if you aim for perfect. So instead, we aim for love.

_Find me here and speak to me_

_I want to feel you, I need to hear you_

_You are the light that's leading me_

_To the place where I find peace again_

_You are the strength that keeps me walking_

_You are the hope that keeps me trusting_

_You are the light to my soul_

_You are my purpose, you're everything_

_You calm the storm and you give me rest_

_You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall_

_You still my heart while you take my breath away_

_Would you take me in, take me deeper_

_Cause you're all I want, all I need_

_You're everything_

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_**The song 'Everything' is by Lifehouse**


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